Echoes Made Real
by thesilversun
Summary: CoE fix-it fic. Using damaged alien technology is never advisable, but Jack needs to see them one last time. The result is something that he could never have predicted.


**Title:** Echoes Made Real.  
><strong>CharactersPairings:** Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys.  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG13  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> Series 1 to 3.  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Using damaged alien technology never advisable, but Jack needs to see them one last time. The result is something that he could never have predicted.  
><strong>AN:** A CoE fix it fic. The Remote and their technology comes from Ancestor Cell, an Eighth Doctor Adventure by Peter Anghelides.

Written for Jantosparkle - a livejournal community

* * *

><p>The Hub shimmers around Jack, a transparent overlay of what once was onto the wreckage of what now remains. Memories good, bad and indifferent of the men and women who had worked there and given their lives for Torchwood bound forever within the stones.<p>

Clutched in his hand the ghost machine hums faintly, its lights pulsing like an alien heartbeat, despite the crack that now runs through it.

Jack's breath catches in his throat as amongst the drifting images, he finally sees what he's been waiting for: his team.

Suzie before alien technology had twisted her brilliant mind. Toshiko before his brother had taken her life just as she was starting to really live it. And Owen, so angry at a world that had taken more from him than it had given, but who'd still died to save it.

All lost to time because he couldn't save them. The grief at losing them is fresh, the emotions stirred up by the ghost machine too strong, and Jack drops to his knees, tears wet on his face.

Closing his eyes Jack listens to them, able for a moment to pretend that it's real, and not just an echo of happier times.

Tosh and Suzie talking excitedly about the piece of alien tech they're working on. Owen suggesting that the object isn't a microphone or some type of device for sampling air quality but an alien sex toy. Ianto asking Owen why he always thinks everything is about sex.

Ianto.

Opening his eyes, Jack sees him hand Owen a mug of coffee. Ianto as he had been in the first few weeks after arriving at Torchwood three, slim and serious, his eyes haunted by what he'd seen at Canary Wharf and by the secrets that he'd still kept.

"You were so young," Jack says, his voice barely above a whisper as he grips the ghost machine tighter. "I should never have let you stay."

Frowning, Ianto puts down the tray with the rest of the mugs on Owen's desk before walking over to Jack. "Sir?"

"You can see me?" Jack asks, shocked, his voice unsteady as Ianto looks him in the eye.

"Of course," Ianto says, sounding concerned as he looks at Jack's tear streaked face. "What's happened?"

"I can't…" Jack closes his eyes again. He'd wanted, needed, to see them again before he left, the newly repaired vortex manipulator offering him a way to escape all the things that remind him of his failures. He'd been prepared for it to be emotional, seeing them and knowing that he'll never get to be with them again, but is this is so much worse.

"Jack?" When Jack doesn't answer Ianto kneels down in front of him, reaching out a hand.

As he touches Jack's arm everything goes white, soundless, and then there's nothing. 

* * *

><p>Head pounding, and disorientated, Jack slowly opens his eyes. Kneeling beside him amongst the rubble of the Hub Ianto looks around, wild-eyed and clearly terrified.<p>

"I can't find them, they were here, they were just here," Ianto says hoarsely, gesturing at the twisted metal and fragmented stones. "Oh god, Lisa."

Scrambling to his feet Ianto starts trying to move the rubble that's blocking the access to the lower levels, oblivious to the sharp edges that cut into his hands.

Jack watches him, Ianto as he was more than two years ago, too stunned to move.

"Help me!" Ianto calls over to him, tries to lift part of one of the fallen roof supports. "Jack, please."

Shaking off the remaining dizziness, Jack gets up, stumbling through the wreckage to get to him.

The rubble shifts beneath Ianto's feet and he drops to his knees.

"Stop, there's nothing you can do," Jack says as he pulls Ianto to his feet, wrapping his arms around him.

"No, let go of me." Ianto pulls free, trying to continue in a rescue attempt that far too late.

"Ianto." Jack catches hold him again.

"We've got to find them," Ianto says desperately, struggling.

"They're gone." Jack's voice is hoarse, choked with tears, as he holds Ianto tighter. "They're all gone."

"No," Ianto says brokenly, all fight going out of of him. "Jack, no. Please, no."

"I'm sorry."

Ianto looks in Jack's eyes for a moment, seeing the desolation, before his legs buckle and he's clinging to Jack for support.

They are still kneeling amongst the wreckage when Gwen arrives.

Taking off his coat Jack wraps it around Ianto, before scrambling back up onto the Plas to meet Gwen.

"What did you do?" Gwen asks, staring wide eyed at Ianto who is still sitting amongst the rubble, Jack's coat wrapped around him.

"I don't know."

Gwen doesn't look like she particularly believes him, but says, "Where's he going to stay? He can't go to his family, not yet. How are we going to tell them?"

"I'll think of something. Until then I'll take him back with me," Jack says looking over at Ianto.

"You live in a hotel."

"So they'll have plenty of room, won't they?" Jack says, not in the mood for discussion. With the Hub gone and his plans to leave Earth finding somewhere permanent to live just hadn't seemed important.

"He was my friend too, you know," Gwen says, tears in her eyes as she looks at Ianto.  
>"And I miss him."<p>

"You haven't got a spare room, and do you really want to spend the evening having to try and explain to Rhys what's going on?"

"Rhys understands a lot more than you give him credit for."

Ianto is unsteady on his feet as he slowly picks his way through the rubble to where Jack and Gwen are standing.

"Ianto?"

"Do I know you?" Ianto asks, looking warily at her.

The tears in Gwen's eyes start to fall and she turns away, saying, "Call me in the morning, Jack, tell me what's on, because I can't deal with this right now." 

* * *

><p>Ianto is silent as Jack takes him back to the hotel room where he's been staying. It reminds Jack of how Ianto had been after Lisa's death and after Brynblaidd: numb.<p>

"What happened?" Ianto asks his voice steady but strained. "I need to know."

"To the Hub?" Jack answers evasively. He's run through all the possibilities that he can think of on the way over to the hotel; alien technology, the Rift, different dimensions, time slips, but only one seems likely given the technology that he was using at the time.

"To everything, everyone. There's so much I don't remember," Ianto says quietly. "It's like half my life isn't there. There are just these fragments, all broken up. I'm not going to remember, am I?"

"I don't know." Jack takes hold of his hand, torn between the wanting to comfort him and knowing that Ianto will want to know the truth no matter the cost to himself. "I think it only found those memories that you made or accessed while you were in the Hub."

"So what? It wiped everything else?" Ianto looks puzzled and then says, "But that doesn't explain why I've got nothing for the last two years. I'd have had thoughts in the Hub in that time, been in the Hub."

"I'm sorry." Jack looks away.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Jack takes a deep breath, hating that he got to do this, but not seeing any other choice. "You don't have those memories because the version of you it created hadn't lived them yet."

"Version of me?" Ianto looks at him, eyes filling with tears. "What am I, Jack? Am I even real?"

"Best guess?" Jack knows that there's no going back now however much it will cost them both. "The technology is something that was made by the Remote, they reform the body from any available biomass of the same species, then imprint the memories."

"Biomass?" Ianto queries, before his eyes go wide in horror as he realises just what Jack means. "I'm made of bits of…Oh God." Ianto covers his mouth with his hand. Retching, he stumbles backwards away from Jack, only managing a few steps before he collapses on the floor.

Kneeling down beside Ianto, Jack pulls him into his arms and holds him.

"I'm nothing, just a monster made from pieces of the dead, from my friends." Ianto turns a tear stained face to Jack. "How am I supposed to live with this?"

Jack knows that there's nothing that he or anybody can say that can make this better, so he says nothing and holds Ianto tighter.

Because while this is Ianto, it's not his Ianto. Not the one that had understood why he'd made the choice that he had with Jasmine, not the one who'd kept him company over the miserable Christmas that John Ellis had died. Not the Ianto that had kissed him so passionately just to let him know that he cared, nor the one who'd made love to him like he was the most precious thing in his life, and not the one who in the dark of the night when they both felt so alone held him close.

As his own tears start to fall, Jack knows that despite his earlier plans he won't run. Not now, because even if this Ianto doesn't love him, and maybe never will, he will keep him safe – it feels like it's the least he can do. 

* * *

><p>AN. I know there's plenty of scope of continuing this into a longer fic, and maybe one day I will, but at the moment there are no current plans to do so.


End file.
